My Son

I took a break from writing for a few days.  I literally felt that I had nothing to be grateful for.  My son suffered a lot this week, and anyone who has a child, let alone a child with a medical issue, knows that seeing that child suffer is just about the worst thing to witness.  I was in a haze all week.  Now that things are beginning to return to normal, snippets of what we endured are returning to mind.

My son was in great pain, cried out in his sleep at night in pain, and had to suffer at the hands of a medical community that doesn’t always know the answers to “fix” him.  Sometimes he asks me to fix him, and I just can’t.  “Mommy, fix me please.”  It’s absolutely heart wrenching to hear these words uttered, without having the ability to perform.

This week he needed to have an IV inserted for his medication, because he just needed it too often for someone to come and administer it.  I learned how to administer the medication through that IV.  When the pain got really bad for him, he would ask me, beg me to give him a “pinch” (what he calls an infusion). 

One night this week, in the middle of the night, I had to wake him up to give him a “pinch.”  As I placed his half limp, slumbering body on his rocking chair, unwrapped the bandage dressing and accessed his IV, he looked down at his arm, then look at me and said, “Mommy, you do magic.”  I cried. 

This child is my whole heart.  This child is so incredibly strong.  And, in recalling that moment, I realized that I am grateful for something.  I am grateful for my child’s strength and for his ability to just be a child, full of wonderment, despite his suffering.